Analysis: How France’s ‘devastating’ Le Principe Tricolore made Ireland look ‘pedestrian’
France trio Charles Ollivon, Thomas Ramos and Antoine Dupont.
If you watched France dismantle Ireland last Thursday and came away thinking “they just have better players”, you’ve missed the point entirely.
Yes, Louis Bielle-Biarrey’s finishing was exceptional. Yes, Dupont is Dupont. But what’s actually happening in the first 20 minutes of French attack, the bit where they look like they’re just battering away in the middle third, is considerably more sophisticated than it appears.
France aren’t playing expansive rugby that occasionally goes narrow. Rather they’re playing systematically narrow rugby that expands with surgical precision at exactly the moment defences collapse. And, Planet Rugby French coaching sources tell us that they’re doing it by dividing the pitch into three vertical corridors that just happen to match their flag: rouge, blanc, et bleu, named, rather appropriately, Le Principe Tricolore.
The Tricolour Principle
The concept is beautifully simple. Split the pitch into three longitudinal zones of roughly equal width. The central corridor, the white zone, runs from about 20 metres inside the left touchline to 20 metres inside the right. The red zone covers everything from the left touchline to that left boundary. The blue zone mirrors it on the right. Think of it as painting a French flag lengthways down the pitch, and you’ve got the basic geography.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. For the first three to four phases after winning possession, France will generally look to attack exclusively in the white zone. Not “predominantly”, not “mostly.” Pretty much exclusively.
Yes, there are moments when they will adapt to context and opportunity; a good example is their penalty advantage trigger, a moment when Thomas Ramos will float behind Antoine Dupont to create maniacal chaos, but generally, inside the white zone is their default.
Inside passes, tight running lines, forwards or centres (Nicolas Depoortere, Anthony Jelonch and Mickael Guillard in particular) hitting direct channels with their shoulders back and their head down. The ball never, and we mean never, travels more than about eight metres laterally. It’s relentless, vertical, and looks for all the world like old-fashioned forward grunt work.
Except it’s not.
Because running precise support lines on the edges of the white zone, right on those red/white and white/blue boundaries, are the left and right flankers. Not roaming all over the pitch diagonally hunting for work or adapting to where the ball happens to be as a traditional openside and blindside system demands, but permanently stationed on those seams, moving vertically in sync with the ball carrier, offering exactly two passing options at every breakdown: inside to a forward, or just-inside-of-lateral to a flanker on the channel boundary.
Against Ireland in the Six Nations opener, you could see this playing out with metronomic precision. Charles Ollivon (although nominally scrummaging as a lock, he acted as one of the seam flanks in open play) and Oscar Jegou camped on those boundaries, permanently five to eight metres from the ball, always moving forward, never drifting wide and with Francois Cros acting as a roving sweeper to increase ruck retention speed. Add in Depoortere, Jelonch and Guillard as heavy carrying options and the picture is complete. Three phases, four phases, occasionally five; just battering away in that central white corridor with inside passes and direct running.
And then Ireland’s defence did what every defence eventually does; they compressed and they retreated into secondary scramble. The outside defenders started creeping in, the centres started drifting, the back three began edging up to snuff out what looked like predictable, one-dimensional attack. Which is precisely when France pull the trigger.
The dual playmaker explosion
Here’s the bit that makes it genuinely devastating. The moment France sense the primary defensive line is compromised, and they’re exceptionally good at sensing this, they don’t just spread the ball wide. They reconfigure their entire attacking shape around two fly-halves operating either side of the scrum-half in a 1-2-3-1 pod.
Ramos, who wears 15 on his back but might as well have “second playmaker” tattooed on his forehead, pushes up into the line and floats around his scrum-half and fly-half. Suddenly, you’ve got Jalibert on one side of Dupont and Ramos on the other, both at first receiver depth, both with the full range of distribution options, both reading the scramble defence in real time.
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Jalibert orchestrated this brilliantly against Ireland, sticking religiously to the plan and bringing Depoortere, Jelonch and Guillard into straight-line carries on 11 separate occasions. Not looping passes as per Bordeaux-Begles, not wide runners but straight lines, shoulders back, hitting the white zone with precisely the angle and timing to keep Ireland’s defence retreating in the middle third. On the five occasions France passed the five phase mark, then he went to the edge as Ireland’s defensive belt tightened to allow fringe space. Both Dupont and Jalibert also employed short chip and gathers, again right down the middle, on phase four and five. In both instances, France scored.
The first playmaker, say in this instance, Jalibert, gets the ball and attacks his channel, but crucially, Ramos isn’t running a dummy line or floating out wide as some sort of decoy. He’s running a supporting inside line off Jalibert’s running line. If the defence stays narrow to shut down Jalibert, the pass goes to Ramos who’s already accelerating into the gap. If they drift to cover Ramos, Jalibert keeps it and straightens up. Either way, you’ve got a playmaker with the ball, moving forward at pace, with French forwards suddenly appearing on his shoulder because they’ve been moving vertically through that white zone for the previous four phases and know exactly where to be.
The Guillard/Ollivon masterclass
Ollivon’s try was the perfect distillation of the entire system. France had worked through their phases in the white zone, getting to the edge of that central corridor, forcing Ireland into their compressed defensive shape. Then from the chaos and broken field that followed, Jalibert short chipped down the dented central cover, pressured the regather of his own kick, Cros, sweeping, collected, offloaded to Jean-Baptiste Gros, who took the ball wide into the blue zone, exactly where Ireland’s scrambling defence didn’t want it to go and delivered a pop pass to Guillard that may very well see his front-row union card revoked.
But here’s the critical bit; once Guillard attacked down the 15m seam, Ollivon didn’t drift wide following the ball. He’d maintained his discipline, running that middle support line through the white zone, moving vertically at pace. When the big Lyon lock drew the last defender and slipped the pass back inside, Ollivon was already there, running the perfect angle, hitting the gap at full speed. It looked opportunistic, but it wasn’t. It was the system working exactly as designed; keep attacking the white zone until the defence breaks, then exploit the space with playmakers wide and support runners holding the middle. And to add theatre, whilst pundits and fans were gasping at the brilliance of the Ramos volley, the opportunity came again from Dupont attacking down the white zone off phase and chipping over.
All of France’s key moments happened after they had battered away in the white zone for multiple phases, Jalibert bringing his centres/carriers onto those straight lines repeatedly, until Ireland’s defensive line finally cracked.
Why the flankers matter
This is where the left/right back-row system we’ve discussed before becomes absolutely critical. Those flankers camping on the red/white and white/blue boundaries aren’t just support runners. They’re the mechanism that prevents defences from simply rushing up and suffocating the white-zone phase play.
Every time France recycle in the white zone, those flankers are permanent threats. Not distant threats requiring a long pass. Not speculative threats requiring broken play. Immediate, present threats five metres from the ball carrier, moving forward in sync, offering an option that’s just lateral enough to create width but just inside enough to maintain forward momentum.
Defences can’t ignore them. If you compress entirely into the white zone, France just slip the ball to a flanker on the boundary and suddenly you’re defending in a phone box against a loose forward at pace. But if you spread to cover those flanker threats, you’ve opened up exactly the gaps in the white zone that France want for their inside-passing game. It’s a genuine tactical bind, and Ireland never solved it.
The exception that proves the rule
The only time France abandon this structure is when they’re kicking contestables, which makes perfect sense. You can’t stick to vertical corridors when you’re playing aerial tennis. But even then, watch what happens when they regather possession – control the drop and straight back into the white zone. Straight back to inside passes and forward-dominant carries and straight back to supporting flankers on the boundaries. It’s not a system they occasionally employ; it’s their default setting, their fundamental organising principle.
Saracens used to do something vaguely similar under Mark McCall; keep it tight, wait for the drift, then pull the trigger. But they didn’t have the left/right back-row structure to create the permanent width threat, and they didn’t have two playmakers reconfiguring the attack in scramble situations. France have essentially taken that basic principle and added two layers of sophistication that make it significantly harder to defend.
The verdict
This isn’t revolutionary. Dividing the pitch into vertical zones is basic coaching theory. Using inside passes to create forward momentum is Rugby 101. Employing dual playmakers in broken play has been around for decades. What’s remarkable is how rigidly France stick to the structure in those opening phases, and how devastatingly they exploit the defensive compression it creates.
Ireland are a top ranked team in the world with a defensive system that’s dismantled almost everyone for four or five years. France made them look pedestrian for long stretches of that match, not through individual brilliance, though there was plenty of that, but through systematic, structured attack that baited Ireland into exactly the defensive shape France wanted.
The tricolore isn’t just a flag. Apparently, it’s also a tactical blueprint.